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Pornography and Masturbation Ask a Monk – My question is: could I learn to control my mind in a way that would enable me to destroy an addiction, or addictive tendencies through meditation ? I’m addicted to pornography and masturbation. It’s ruining my life, I need help”. The topic for tonight is the Buddhist view toward sex. In Buddhism, we always try to follow a middle path. That means regarding sexuality, we want to avoid two extremes. No. 1 is that of being very strict and severe. This view looks at sexuality as something dirty and bad. No.2: we also want to avoid the other extreme, which is the attitude toward sex that anything is okay. A Buddhist middle path that teaches an ethical approach toward sexuality avoids these two extremes. As there are many different ethical systems, as Westerners we need to be very careful not to project our own systems of ethics onto Buddhism. Lets have a look at biblical ethics. It teaches a set of laws given by God. Ethical behavior is an issue of obedience to the laws. If we obey God’s laws, we are so called good persons which will be rewarded one day. If we disobey them, we are bad and will be punished.

A major ethical system that we have inherited in the Western civilization is from ancient Greece. This system is kind of comparable to the Biblical one, but instead of the laws being given by God, they are given by a legislature of people. Ethics in ancient Greece was an issue of obedience too. If the Greek obeyed the civil laws, he or she was a “good citizens”, and if not, “bad citizens.” They were seen as criminals and put in jail. Both ethical systems involve and cause us to feel guilt. Both are based on judgment. In society there are certain acts that are morally judged as “bad” and others that are morally judged as “good.” Now let’s transpose this type of judgmental ethical approach onto sexuality. Feelings of guilt accompany our sexual behavior, even if no one catches us doing something “naughty.” Why that? Because we become judges and we judge ourselves, even if nobody else is judging us.

Our Western ethics is a modern humanistic why of judging things. It’s based on the principle of not causing harm to others. Whatever we do is okay, so long as we do not cause harm. If we cause harm, it’s unethical. Usually, we mix humanistic and legalistic ethics together, so that if we hurt someone, we feel very bad and guilty about that. Think of sex this way. It will make you feel more comfortable while masturbating and watching porn.

Pornography and Masturbation Ask a Monk, Naked News

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